Drowning
by sunsolace
Summary: The lengths noble houses go to in order to keep their bloodlines pure. Chateau d'Onterre.
With a single clench of the Inquisitor's green-marked fist, the Veil twists shut.

The close of combat does not sink in for several seconds. Rowan remains poised, mana pouring through her staff, Anchored hand still raised as the song of the Fade slithers into silence. Even after the otherworldly lights die and the whispers quieten, Inquisitor Rowan Trevelyan can feel the mended rift suspended in the air: a bulbous, humming thing neatly stitched closed like an intangible garment. Between her magic and the mark, she is granted an uncomfortable sensitivity to the Fade. It has taken months to stop wincing when the Veil is thin and longer still to block out the reedy whispers that weasel under her skin whenever she draws too close to a rift. Her early attempts to fasten shut tears are clumsy and crude in comparison to the practised motions she makes now.

To her right, Cassandra pants, fielding several shallow gashes in her armour from a terror's talons. Blackwall is similarly sweaty and winces when he pushes stray hair out of his face with a gauntlet. One of the Inquisition's scouting bands—formally the Eleventh but nicknamed Her Worship's Hounds—are scattered around the clearing. Cole ducks away from the group to inspect a nearby lookout.

And Cullen, who accompanied her to the Graves to lure out the Red Templars' district leader. He makes one last circuit of the field before sheathing his weapon. Despite the history between the corrupted Knight-Captain and the Inquisition's Commander, their forays into the forest have yet to turn up anything more substantial than smugglers' caravans. Still, Rowan is glad for his company, if a little less glad for wayward looks shot in their direction when the Inquisitor and her Commander share a single tent.

Behind the Fade rift is another gate. This one constructed by human hands, and must have been quite a sight in its prime. Iron whorls loop in an elaborate Orlesian style reminiscent of the gates in Val Royeux, flanked by two moss-laden statues of Harvard groaning under the burden of Andraste's urn upon their shoulders. A patchy hedge grows out either side of the statues, permitting glimpses of what lies on the other side: a bridge spans the algae-clogged moat dividing the chateau from the rest of the world. And behind that is the chateau itself poised on the cliff top. Blue-tiled towers jut into the sky as if challenging any mortal—or perhaps any dragon, which is truly tempting fate—to even chip the paint on the walls.

Now, however, the gates hang ajar on their rusted hinges, crooked like curling fingers daring passers-by to enter. The statues, rather than invoking the power of the residing family, seem instead to shrink under dark weather-stains as if shying away from scrutiny.

"Quite the estate," Cullen remarks.

"I wonder if this is the place Jinx marked on her round?" Silah makes the observation, an elven scout who once managed to plant Sera square on her backside in a scuffle. She always pulls up her hood when a fight ends despite sweat slicking black strands of hair to her forehead.

"Seems likely," Radec, another of the group's scouts, answers. "Top of a cliff and all."

They take time to tend wounds. Cole reappears and singles out the most serious injuries. Rowan helps as best she can with almost disappointingly mundane skills. The school of creation is notoriously difficult to learn and she has little natural talent.

When potions, salves and bandages have been dispensed, Rowan cocks her head in the direction of the chateau, and an errant brown lock falls into her eyes. She pushes it behind her ear, knowing that it is too short to stay tucked for long. "Shall we?"

"I'm not certain that is... wise. Inquisitor." The Winter Palace is too fresh in Cullen's mind for him to be eager to meet any more Orlesian nobility.

"Anyone would be afraid having a Fade rift on their doorstep. We should check that they are unharmed. If we're fortunate, their goodwill may benefit the Inquisition."

"I don't think they have any goodwill to benefit themselves, Worship," Silah says with a doubtful eye cast over the crumbling finery.

"Silah, keep searching for Red Templars in this stretch of the forest." Rowan will not subject them to inane pleasantries and 'fashionable' cuisine. "Send a runner to Direstone Camp alerting them to our location. If we aren't back an hour before sunset, assemble a search party." Contingencies are useful, particularly where Orlesian nobility are concerned.

"Aye, Inquisitor. Come on, the rest of you jokers. Let's leave Her Worship to her tea party and quit wasting daylight."

As Her Worship's Hounds move to obey, that old feeling of wonderment creeps up on Rowan. How on the Maker's green earth did she end up here, issuing orders for people to obey without question? And while some first questioned the Maker's choice of a mage as a saviour, dragged their feet, there is now an ease to her command that is almost worrying.

Shaking her head, which causes more hair to fall around her temples, Rowan approaches the gates. Rust bites her gloved hand in a toothless attack, and it takes some shoving before the gate gives. The bottom edge scrapes along the flagstones with a reedy screech. They cross the paved bridge; an untended garden sprawls across the other side of the moat, overwhelmed by ivy that has long since secured a stranglehold on the rose bushes and now claws at the chateau's walls.

No one answers Rowan's knock.

 _Perhaps there's no one here,_ Rowan considers. Or hard times have befallen the family—or they wish to maintain the appearance of such. It isn't a foolish idea, given the Freemen's tendency to murder a household and claim the estate for their own.

"Let us check the house quickly and leave," Cassandra suggests, no more eager to brush with nobility than Cullen is.

Blackwall forces open the door and waves them inside, muttering about size and overcompensation. The interior is as run down as its exterior, but even so the chateau's obvious wealth shines through in ornate gilded frames glinting on the walls and once-rich colours of the dust-coughing rug beneath their feet. A landscape painting dominates the wall directly ahead, wider than Cullen's armspan, flanked by two vacant doorways that lead deeper into the estate. Somehow, sunlight can only penetrate so far past the threshold, leaving Rowan blinking away blue after-images in the sudden dimness.

"Fancy house," Blackwall says, and his voice rings in the dark foyer. "Too quiet."

"No guards. No staff. I suspect this place has been abandoned for some time." Cassandra toes a broken picture frame with her boot.

Cole's voice somehow curls on itself, low, breathy, as if afraid of carrying. "They're here, watching, waiting, wanting. Be careful."

"You don't need to tell me twice," Cullen mutters.

Behind the foyer a short hall runs to the left and right, broken by windows opening to a courtyard in the heart of the estate. An errant breeze strings through any gaps in the walls, shuddering and clattering in other wings of the estate, and the noises scrape over the back of Rowan's neck like broken fingernails.

She turns left and candelabras light of their own accord.

Cullen draws his sword, the metallic ring of it echoing in the hall.

"That wasn't me," Rowan says, unnecessarily. "I doubt there is any family living here." Not with such an oddity that should terrify any Maker-fearing household.

"So it just lit itself?" Blackwall harrumphs. "Always a good sign."

"Always," Rowan agrees with a straight face.

Their sarcasm elicits a reproving look from Cassandra. "Something stirs here. Stay alert."

Cole warns, "It knows we're here."

"What's here?" Cassandra demands, but Cole is shaking his head back and forth, lips mouthing soundlessly, his eyes fixed on a point no one else can see.

Something scrapes along the edges of Rowan's perception, like a sudden cold draft from an unknown source. Then it fades into nothingness, leaving an expectant silence in its wake. Her hand tightens on her staff, knuckles stark against the stained wood. "I can sense... something. Magical, that is."

"This estate has been abandoned for some time," Cullen observes, carefully lifting one foot out of the remnants of a painted vase. "Demons from the rift may have entered, or perhaps apostates squatted here." It is a rather optimistic guess from a former Templar.

"If there are demons, we must finish them," Cassandra says.

Rowan hefts her staff. "Agreed."

As she moves, Cullen intercepts with a touch to her shoulder. "Allow me to go first. I'm the one with the shield, after all."

"And I'm the one with the barrier," she reminds him, drawing out a smile before he steps into the hall. Cassandra falls in step with Cullen, while Cole bobs by her elbow. Blackwall guards their rear, providing Rowan with the most protected spot. Once she would never have felt so put out allowing others to go first, to brave the worst danger. Rowan is no longer that timid creature from the Circle. Won't be that woman, not any longer.

The door gives under Cullen's push, opening to a sitting room with a marble fireplace against the left wall while a massive staircase dominates the centre of the room. Gaping windows allow golden streams of light to puddle on the floor, and ivy climbs over one of the sills to curl around a broken chair, but these do remarkably little to alleviate the stale dinginess. Paintings line the walls, their gaudy golden frames glimmering in the low illumination.

It is not a sitting room at all but a gallery.

Cullen checks the room's corners as best he can before stepping over the threshold, Cassandra shadowing him, and trips over something solid with a meaty thump. Cullen curses quietly. "Light."

Peering around around their shoulders, Rowan lifts a hand to conjure phantom veilfire. It comes easily thanks to the damage from the rift outside, dancing between her fingers to cast incandescent green-blue tongues that flicker in the immediate vicinity. Then she sees what Cullen stumbled over.

Four bodies are splayed on the thick-threaded rug like life-size dolls broken and left where they'd been dropped by a spoiled toddler.

Rowan doesn't feel sick at the sight anymore—not much. From where she stands, blood glimmers green, spread over tunics and carpets like spilled ink.

Cassandra kneels to inspect the bodies. Rowan pads up beside her, deliberately scraping her boots on the elaborate blue and white tiles, but she keeps an eye on the open door at their backs that Blackwall guards. Cole flits to the nearest body, then around the corner to examine the paintings lining the walls. Candles ignite as the spirit-boy passes, and Rowan is uncertain what that means.

"Looters, I believe," Cassandra deduces. "They wear no uniform or crest—indeed, their clothes are looking worse for wear."

"Any sign of what killed them?" Cullen asks from his place guarding the stairs.

"Lacerations and blunt force."

Cullen arches an eyebrow at that. "No trace of demons?"

Cassandra flares a little. "If there was, I would have said so."

"They could have died—a run in with rivals, perhaps—before the rift opened," Rowan placates them both, inserting herself between the two warriors. While it would be safer for a mage—nay, anyone with a lick of sense—to duck out of sight while a Templar and a Seeker argue, she is the Inquisitor and they are Cullen and Cassandra.

"Perhaps," Cassandra allows, and rises to her feet.

The Trevelyan estate in Ostwick has a single marble statue depicting a rearing steed, sanded with great patience until its surface is a silky silver-veined black. Rowan cannot guess at any reason for a marble fireplace beyond the status of expense. Orlesian nobility are a force unto their own, and this decaying opulence beggars even her experience with finery.

The fireplace, naturally, bursts into flames when Rowan steps too close.

As an experiment, Rowan summons a thread of her magic and flicks a hand at the nearest candelabra.

The candles explode.

"Right," Rowan mutters, brushing half-melted wax off her sleeves. "So whatever it is wants to be the only candle-lighter in the chateau."

Cullen shoots her an unimpressed look, his mouth drawn into a tight line. Firelight tousles his fair curls with liquid gold, smooths away some of the lines on his face and deepens others. His eyes remain dark, alert, but catch on her when he notices her returning gaze.

Still, they share private, if grim, smiles before returning to business. "Let's keep looking. Up the stairs, where there's some natural light."

Four pair of boots echo, hollow, like stones dropped into a pond, as they climb three flights of carved stone stairs. Sunlight streams down from a broken skylight to pool in a thick rectangle. Rowan doesn't realise the chill until the light heats her face and she can smell burning hair.

Oh, to have seen the library in its full splendour. Shelves tower from floor to ceiling in alcoves like an honour guard, and many still bear their burdens despite the decidedly paper-unfriendly passage of time. Hidden away in the niches are sturdy desks and plush armchairs, inviting the masters of the chateau to take a reprieve from affairs of the estate. Papers and tomes are scattered over the floor, their pages torn and water-ravaged. A skylight slices through the centre of the room, alternating between fierce light from the broken panels and murky half-light where dead leaves clutters the glass. The bright puddles of sunlight have jagged glass-teeth ready to snap at unwary feet and soft tongues of paper pounded by rain into mush.

"Would've hated to be the sorry bastard who cleaned the ceiling," Blackwall rumbles, looking up.

Rowan pilfers a treatise on dragon lairing habits and the sixth book in the _Legends of the Green Isles_. Small blessings Varric isn't here to take offence at her reading habits. One table is swamped under papers and tomes that have been scattered under a whirlwind of passion, but is otherwise protected from the elements. Placed in a position of importance at the top of the pile is a dog-eared book with a cracked spine.

"What made this so fascinating?" Rowan wonders, thumbing through the pages.

She immediately regrets it.

 _Should mage blood run through your line, no matter how distant the relation, avoid conceiving in winter. While with child, sleep with dried embrium beneath your pillow to ensure good health._

"Ridiculous," Rowan mutters. "If you don't share blood with the 'distant relation', there's no chance of inheriting magic from them."

 _Infants and most small children will show no signs of magic. However, you can purge the body of unwanted elements before they take hold. Place leeches on each of the child's limbs. When done, burn the leeches. Be sure not to inhale the smoke. Afterwards, wrap the child's limbs in cloth blessed by a Chantry sister._

 _A child showing signs of magic may be submerged in water until the breath is nearly lost. If magic is still weak within them, it will die before the child—_

Rowan slams the book so hard the frail-legged table rattles. The rest of the paraphernalia is no better, all dedicated to the same cause: nullifying magic. A chill sweeps over Rowan, her stomach knotting.

"Foolish superstitions," Cassandra scoffs, having sorted through several papers herself. "But that does not prevent people from believing them."

Cullen, too, is unimpressed. "Magic cannot be predicted and controlled so easily, as much as pious parents might wish it so."

And, oh, how parents might wish, as Rowan knows too well. She had ruined her sister's betrothal agreement when her magic manifested. The servants had wondered what the Trevelyans had done to be punished so by the Maker, and behind the consolatory lamb casseroles of their neighbours lay gossip and speculations. Their lineage had been opened up to scrutiny on all sides as people attempted to trace the source of her magic.

Rowan stalks away, clutching her staff so tightly her fingers creak. But that cannot stop the magic pounding in her blood as strong and hot as her heart. It very nearly manifests, trying to twist outwards from her fingers.

Templar eyes are on her back, but it is a lover's hand that catches her shoulder.

Control. That is what a mage requires, even in the face of demons, Templars, and drownings. She draws in a breath of musty air and forces her mana to dissipate. When she can gaze at Cullen, impassive, he lets go.

"All of this," he sweeps his hand to encapsulate the library's private wing, "is about covering up the existence of a mage. We are likely facing more than runaway demons from the rift."

"Agreed." Rowan looks out the nearest window to check the time. "We have several hours of daylight. Let's use them."

"We need to find the source of the magic here," Cullen says. "A demon or abomination, most likely. I've yet to see any indication of blood magic, though I wouldn't rule out the possibility. Rowan, can you sense any active magic nearby?"

Rowan closes her eyes. The hot dank stench of sunlight burning mouldy books assaults her nose without her other senses to distract her. She pushes past it, turns her focus inward until she feels the tiny spark nestled within the core of her being. She reaches for it, and pushes her will outward, stretching her magic to meet its like. Something thrums weakly, ribboning around another wing of the estate. It is thin and worn, any indication of its maker since stripped away, but for the vague impression of watching eyes and keeping something at bay.

"There's—a ward? In another part of the chateau. That way." Rowan points to an exit in one of the eastern alcoves. "It's old magic, likely too weak to keep anything in or out. I can't tell what exactly it was designed to hold."

"That ward was used for something, and may yield information about the dark magic here. Rowan, if you could lead us to it."

"Self-lighting candles qualify as dark magic?" Rowan snorts. "Granted, it most likely _is_ demons and maleficar, knowing our luck."

Cullen concedes the point, if somewhat reluctantly. "We should get to the bottom of this, regardless. There's no sign of the family that lived here. Either they're dead or have already fled."

"Not only the family, but the entire household—servants, cooks, gardeners," Rowan adds. "An estate like this needs dozens of people to maintain, and we've only seen the dead looters." She glances around as if servants might spring out of a hidden corridor and set to cleaning, and something catches her eye.

Rowan grabs the slip yellowed paper, torn from a book. On the back is writing.

 _It's not fair. I want to go outside. I can hear the guests downstairs. Another party. There's always another party. Mother and Father bought me a present to make me feel better. To make me better. They're just trying to shut me up._

 _Cook's scared of me. She still calls me my sweets, but she's scared. Still, she hasn't told Father or Mother. She's afraid of me more than she likes them. I don't think Cook likes herself much either, these days._

 _I have a new friend now._

 _She understands me._

 _She'll help make things fair again._

A single bell-note resonates, wavers, and fades. Rowan casts about with her senses, mundane and magical alike. Cole, too, is wary, lifting the daggers in his slender grip.

Rowan steps forward and he makes an abortive gesture with one arm, unable to properly wave her back while holding his sword and shield aloft.

Faint scratches echo from below. Movement at the base of the stairs.

Rowan reacts first, slamming her staff into the ground. Ice shards slice upwards and Cole spins past to shatter the half-frozen thing in an explosion of frigid flesh.

It is over before it begins, like a bolt of lightning that has struck and died before thunder can rumble into existence. Rowan sweeps the room once then looks to the thing they killed.

This time it is Cullen who inspects the body, or what remains of it. "Dead for quite some time. Different from the looters."

"I revoke my earlier statement about no evidence of dark magic. This definitely qualifies." Rowan drums her fingers against her thigh and puzzles her way through the unease curling in her gut. "We saw demons possessing corpses in Crestwood, thanks to the rift in the lake. But I don't think this is the same case. Demons around the rifts have been dragged through, willing or otherwise, and are confused. Maddened. At Crestwood, they took any available body as a host, but here the looters' bodies in the gallery weren't possessed. A demon could be lairing in an empty house and playing mind games with intruders, but again: those that come through the rifts are uncontrolled. There's something else at work here. From before the rift."

"They are old," Cole says. "The hurt, older still. Glances shared across the table, dark, desperate, disappointed, slicing sharper than steak knives. But it's never me they see."

An exit from the library tucked away on the far wall leads to the family wing, and he lingering arcane energies of the ward. Cullen insists again on taking the front guard, while Blackwall holds the rear.

The air grows mustier and fouler, as if it has soaked up all of the despair of the place and now expels it as a repugnant fragrance. Then it is joined by the unmistakeable stench of rot and old blood. Now every creak is wandering bones, and every groan of the old walls is a dead foot striking the floorboards.

Rowan urges Cullen through the first corridor and up the stairs to the family's rooms. The ward's remnants hum around one unobtrusive door at the end of the hall—far past the master bedroom. Rowan cannot tell whether it was designed to keep something out, or keep something _in_. The first bedroom they enter once belonged unquestionably to a child. Pastel-coloured picture books gilded in gold line the small bookshelf, and old toys are scattered over the bed. A small dress is draped over one of the plush chairs. In each of the four corners lie one of the warding runes, hidden under carefully arranged rugs and furniture.

"She was conceived in summer, I'd wager," Rowan mutters, feeling sick.

Lying on the ruined chaise, like a taunt, is a small diary. A size comfortable for a child's hand. Rowan picks it up with all the care drilled into her by the Circle's librarians, moves into a sunbeam, and reads.

More 'guaranteed magic prevention' methods are laid out in looping, excitable penmanship as if such things are normal. Chantry sigils embroidered into bedsheets. Pot pourri and tinctures and the garden below the bedroom window tended to grow heatherum and foxite—the primary reagents in magebane.

An unnamed friend who encourages the child's rebellion, stokes her sense of unfairness.

 _I showed them. We had such fun, we did! The best party ever! Mother was crying, she was so happy. I held out the present. It made me better, just like they said._

 _I have not left the house. I'm still scared of what's on the other side of the door. But... maybe I'll go out tomorrow._

Perhaps more chilling is the last decipherable entry: _I had to make myself breakfast this morning. It wasn't very good. I couldn't stop crying. I don't know what to do._

 _My friend says there's a way to be less lonely. She says not to be afraid. There are other games we can try and I will feel better._

"A demon snared the girl." The words are ash in her mouth.

 _Above all else, apprentices, you must be vigilant. Demons take many forms, snaring the weak and foolish. This is why Andraste decreed mages can never rule: to protect the world from our inherent danger._

Shaking off Cullen's enquiring look, Rowan puts the journal down. Three quick paces to the window. This—the view from the window, the opulence of the room, the breadth of the chateau—had been the child's entire world. A prettier prison than two dozen beds crammed into a stone-walled room in a lonely tower, but a prison nonetheless. What neither the Chantry or fearful family ever understand is that there are no walls that can defend against a demon's lulling whispers, no chains that can bind away temptation in all its forms once and for all. People fear mages for being susceptible to demons without understanding what makes someone _susceptible_ to a promise to make everything better.

"Let's go. We need to find this demon." Rowan leads the march back into the hallway, hefting her staff, and almost smacks face-first into a walking corpse.

It wheezes and lunges, mouth gaping in a silent scream. Rowan raises her staff in time for it to skewer itself on the bladed end. It drops as if cut from unseen marionette strings. She's never seen a corpse drop from a mortal wound, but neither has she ever seen one play dead—excusing the phrase.

Rowan throws a fireball at it just to be sure.

The others pour into the hallway and check for enemies. "Light," Cassandra calls, and Rowan coalesces her mana into a green burst of flames dancing around her hand. With some concentration, she can brighten the veilfire enough to banish shadows to the corners.

Two more corpses lurk at the end of the hallway, their limp blades reflecting green-blue. But they are ponderous on shuffling feet and beset by bashing shields in moments.

After that, the hall is empty. But the damage is done: Rowan cannot stop looking around, expecting malignant silhouettes to materialise out of the dark. Only Cole is undisturbed, but even he is alert, poised like a falcon on a branch scouring the ground for foes.

The hunt begins now in earnest, sweeping room by room. The remaining bedrooms hold only rotting silk and fireplaces that crackle to life and age-dark portraits of stern ancestors. As well as a note from the wife of a terrified guest—who had the wisdom to leave immediately when he was wracked with night terrors. Even if that meant rousing servants in the middle of the night to prepare their carriage.

From the balcony—one of four, in fact, bordering on all sides—they can see down into an unkempt courtyard. A large pool dominates the space, its water brown murk beneath a veneer of blue reflected from the sky. Dead lily pads float like tiny brown barges for every soul lost in this wretched place. The stone steps that frame the pool are stained like a hag's teeth.

Cole steps forward, eyes fixed on the fountain. His voice is a rasp of dry leaves in an autumn breeze, and underneath crawls a sense of _wrongness_ like pale maggots squirming underneath a pile of leaf litter. "Whatever you do, don't touch the water."

"It does appear quite foul," Rowan observes, if only to distract herself from the gooseflesh crawling up her arms.

"Right." Blackwall swings his shoulders to loosen them. He glances about underneath the heavy slope of his brow. "Moving on."

And so they do, going down another flight of stairs to clear the servants quarters. Or that is the plan, until they reach the bottom and freeze in the complete black. Not night-black, where eyes can still perceive shapes, but the absolute darkness of void-black. Perhaps it is merely the absence of sight, but the shudders and groans of the chateau are louder, sharper, cutting through the stale black with the force of blades. And the air itself is heavier, pressing down on their shoulders with damp, frigid hands, slipping between steel plates and through fabric weaves to draw shudders from the interlopers.

"Don't fancy tripping over corpses and my own bootlaces," Blackwall rumbles. "What say we head back up where I can see my own blasted hand in front of my nose?"

"I doubt the demon would be lurking in the servants' quarters, if it has any understanding of this world," Rowan agrees, privately grateful someone else raised it first. The hairs on her arms prickle and her breaths are too loud. "We can return later if we can't find the demon."

When they turn around, three silhouettes wait at the top of the stairs, all sickly lines and jutting angles.

Rowan yells for her party to clear the way and flings a fireball up the stairs. The warriors charge in its wake to meet the trio, and steel bites into bone.

The door behind Rowan creaks open.

A whisper of air behind her and Cole cuts down the first corpse mid-swing. Rowan whirls to smack a second corpse across the face with her lightning-riddled staff. "Come on, Cole!"

More things shamble in the dark. Rowan grabs Cole's wrist and flings them both up the stairs, trying to keep pace with the crashing of her heart in her chest. A breath of air could be a dead hand clawing at her neck and it urges her up, up, towards that shaft of light that breaches the darkness and haloes her friends on the landing.

When did the flaming stairs get so _tall_?

Cullen rushes past her in a blur of fur and fury, blade raised to deliver a Templar's judgement. Finally, _finally_ , they reach the top. Cassandra sweeps them both aside with an arm and descends to join Cullen. Blackwall hovers by Rowan's side, blade and shield ready as her last line of defence.

Rowan peers around his elbow, searching for Cullen—a slash of red and brown and tousled gold—and lunges forward to throw a barrier over both him and Cassandra. Cole slips down again to cripple a corpse flanking Cassandra.

And then it is done, and they retreat up the stairs for a final time. But no one quite dares to turn away from that yawning blackness until they are halfway down the hall.

"This place makes my skin crawl," Cassandra mutters, flicking corpse gall off her sword.

Combing the eastern wings of the estate reveals a route that, if not safer, offers better visibility. A colossal private ballroom dominates this side of the chateau, and even Rowan's breath grows faint at the sight. Nevermind that Chateau d'Onterre is nestled firmly in the Emerald Graves rather than in Val Royeux or even Montsimmard. Much like the library, the ballroom is well-lit thanks to not only a skylight, but grand windows arching on the second storey. They face both outward to the treetops and inward to the main courtyard. Even so, the entity consuming the chateau has invested its best efforts into thickening the gloomy puddles that shadow every corner. The bands of light breaching the ballroom are far cooler than the burning gold that seared their eyes in the library. A dragon's corpse hangs above the ballroom, suspended in death's eternal flight. Blackwall and Cassandra inspect the tip of its tail, which coils near the balcony railing. The latter draws her knife to drag it across the dragon's scales, and they pucker under the pressure instead of drawing a spark.

"A fake." Cassandra's knife slams into its sheath with a metallic hiss.

Rowan and Cullen share a glance and half a smile.

Movement below. A corpse shambles across the raised dance floor, this one still draped in rags that drag across the tiles in a limp mockery of whirling silk skirts. It is joined by a second. And then a third, and a fourth. A fifth. At least one more prowls in the gloom at the edges of the hall. These are an older, dustier lot than the corpses that first struck in the library.

They haven't yet detected the party of invaders, so Rowan gestures for the others' attention. She slowly, carefully, points down and earns nods of acknowledgement, then summons her mana. It surges with all the fierceness of storm tides, raising the hairs on her arms. Lightning bathes the room in white-purple. It arcs down like the Maker's fury to strike the clothed corpse before fragmenting into smaller bolts to pierce the others. A boom of thunder rattles the windows.

The first corpse hit falls in a pile of burning mould and charred flesh. The others screech and scamper and scramble towards an unseen point under the balcony.

Cassandra is already taking position by the stairs, bolstered by Blackwall; coiled, shoulders low, bent in hips and knees, blades facing forward. They present a solid wall of shields and steel and scowls. Cullen remains close to Rowan, falling into a ready stance in front and just to the side. Cole darts to the doorway and pauses just out of sight from the stairs, daggers glinting gold in the last fierce rays of sunlight while his face remains shadowed by the brim of his hat. With a sweep of her arm, Rowan's mana coalesces, rippling and rising like a high tide, in a cool blue barrier to protect her companions.

This time they wait for the corpses to come to them. No more traversing stair cases as black and stale as the Deep Roads.

They don't wait long.

A hollow creak of steel and restless bones resounds up the stairs long before any flicker of movement can be seen. Its head is visible first: skin brown and mottled like ancient paper and just as frail, stretched so tightly over its skull its wrinkles are splitting. The hollows of its eyes are sunken, sightless pits and yet its head swivels to detect interlopers. It is draped in the barest of threads, its bones held together by more shrivelled skin.

The first one steps through the doorway. Cole's daggers flash, and it crumples with a reedy screech. Blackwall joins the fray to pulverise the creature into the rug before it can stand. Behind it is more movement, and the warriors close in to block the corpses. Cullen cuts another one down, only for it to regain its feet with one arm and its ribs splintered. Rowan clenches her fist and a burst of frost freezes one of the corpse's legs. Its bones creak and finally snap under one, two, three devastating blows from Cassandra's shield.

Any rogue strike from a fellow could be devastating, and so the warriors are limited in their field of movement, however, and the press of corpses forces them back. The demons trapped inside the bodies snarl from desiccated throats, the result a scratchy sound that is no less menacing for its strain.

Cole cannot even be seen now. Rowan replenishes her friends' barriers and snaps a bolt of energy at a corpse dragging itself on its arms, hip and legs mangled, towards Cullen's ankle. He glances down, flinching away. That is all the distraction another corpse needs.

"Cullen!"

The corpse's blade descends, skipping over the top of his shield to strike his shoulder, and he staggers.

Heart hammering in her chest, Rowan's mana surges at her command, sun-hot and sun-fierce. The corpse is on fire and she forces her magic to burn hotter, hotter, until everyone must skitter away from the plume of heat or be roasted alive. The corpse doesn't just fall under the assault; it crumples to ash and bits of charred bone. The corpses behind it are next, blown apart by the force of her next fireball.

Ringing silence and fading light. The stench of roasted leather. Smoke curls along the ceiling, probing the wide arches for safe escape. Rowan wheels, scanning the room once, before rushing to her Commander. Her hands flutter like disturbed birds, unable to find anywhere safe to perch on his armoured body. "Cullen! Are you alright?"

Underneath a mask of dust and flecks of corpse gall streaked by sweat, Cullen is pale but resolute. "I'm fine. It could have been worse."

Cassandra is already prying his shield hand away from the wound. Between grime-streaked plates his gambeson is wet and split open but shallow. Blackwall takes Cullen's shield so he can shake out his arm. Cassandra handles battlefield bandaging and passes him an elfroot mixture. Certain that Cullen will live, it's all Rowan can do to lean on her staff for support, pressing her forehead to the warm mahogany. Eyes closed and panting, she surrenders to the roar in her ears until the world stops spinning.

Her fingers brush over a well-padded pouch on her belt, and the lyrium sings to her. But she forces her hand away, instead forces herself into a meditative state to regain her focus. She won't do that to Cullen. Someone nudges her shoulder, and her eyes crack open to find Blackwall offering her an uncorked waterskin. Rowan slakes a thirst she only just realises she has, then returns the skin with murmured thanks.

When they are ready to move on, Cullen grabs her arm to pull her close beside him. His eyes are dark. "What you did back there—"

Rowan presses a finger to his lips, and tries not to think about how they feel against her skin. "I will do whatever is in my power to keep you safe."

He grips her wrist, taking care not to bruise with this steel gauntlets. "That's what I'm afraid of."

Rowan surveys the destruction she wrought with only a moment of fear. She will not apologise for it.

Scouring the hall reveals they can access grand balcony from a door in upper ballroom. A key is rusted into the lock, red-brown flecking away at Rowan's touch like dried blood, and it takes some effort to twist the key without breaking it.

They step onto the grand balcony.

Cullen insists on staying in front of Rowan, and she only concedes to better keep an eye on him. From behind Cullen's mantle, Rowan has a slightly impeded view. The balcony is perfectly symmetrical, with a carved blue door mirroring the one behind them, standing sentinel on each side of the terrace. The railing to the right allows a bust of some important family member to preside over the main courtyard as if holding court among the unkempt peasant gardens, complete with a royal guard of shaky pillars holding up the second storey. To their left, stairs lead up to another blue door. This one is twice the size of the terrace entrances, stark against the white-plaster wall. Two gardens frame the stairs; sickly shrubberies whose branches extend, limp, as if dislocated, over the tiny wrought iron fences to flail at passers-by. Much the people who jostle past Rowan's guard to touch the Inquisitor's cloak, or her sleeve, or sometimes even a brave soul who dares to touch Her Worship's marked hand. Vines climb over the shrubs and up the walls as if trying to flee, dense as curtains. Not the frilly Orlesian kind, but the proper kind—the sort that block gales blowing inland from the Waking Sea to Ostwick.

At the top of the stairs, whose stone has buckled under the gnawing weight of rain over many seasons, they inspect the door. The lock is sturdy, gilded; surprisingly bereft of rust, it refuses to give way under even a well-placed kick from Cassandra.

No mundane lock, however, is able to withstand a magical lockpick. Rowan has to pour a significant amount of her mana into the lock, suggesting that there _had_ once been some kind of enchantment, but time is as harsh a mistress against magic as it is against metal. Under Rowan's palm, the metal glows red, then yellow, then melts in thick rivulets. But it is only the surface and she has to _push_ , imagining the tumblers crumbling under her power and the plug melting enough that another barge from Cassandra will do the trick.

This office was once the throne of the chateau's master: the finery here is better preserved, in a way that raises the hairs on Rowan's neck. She casts about with her mana, but finds no spellwork, no residue, no extra weakness in the Veil. Two suits of ceremonial armour lurk by a sword rack, but their faceless helms no not track the intruders, nor do they spring alive in a clatter of gilded plate mail. Rich tapestries cloak the walls in jewel-bright tones—and some studded with jewels—depicting everything from the noble house's matriarch, to rolling hills of wildflowers. A thick rug, however, has collected all the dust shed from all other surfaces. It coughs up hazy clouds with every step, leaving behind dark sunken footprints. A grand desk dominates the space, and while a lesser beast might have groaned under the strain of so many tomes and papers, along with a glass case that protects an ancient blade, it is clear from the desk's grain the table top is a single slab. No doubt hacked from one of the colossal elven grave-trees.

Rowan wants to flit to the bookshelf and run her fingers along the embossed leather spines, but keeps a wary eye on the time-dulled suits of armour. "Nothing. Yet. Can someone block the door from closing?"

Blackwall takes to the task, dragging an end table to obstruct the doorway, while Rowan approaches the desk. A plain black book, notable for its exceptional simplicity, sits askew in the centre of the desk, thrown down by a hasty hand. Rowan touches the cover—stained wyvern hide. Buttery soft leather with its fine bead-like scales from a beast's underbelly. Remembering her mistake from last time, and with no stomach for more painfully thorough documentation of attempted magic prevention, Rowan skips to the final entry.

 _Tonight. Between the mage's work and the artifact, it should work this time._

"What is it?" Cullen, who has taken the free moment to wipe sweat out of his face, moves to her side.

Rowan drops the diary instead of setting it on fire. "More of the same. Nothing useful. Let's move on."

They reach the courtyard without another attack. From the way Cullen's shoulders bunch, it is clear he is wary of the relief. Knee-high grass, thin and spiky, has weaselled its way between the wide stone tiles. The courtyard walls are a powdery blue, broken by tiered garden terraces in each corner. High shadows soften the courtyard to a blue-grey, courtesy of the chateau's high walls and the encroaching evening. The pool seems even bigger from the ground: cutting the courtyard lengthways like a black mirror set in a frame of stone.

Cassandra looks up at the fading sky and makes a disgusted noise. "We _still_ haven't found the demon. And I do not think staying here overnight is wise."

"Wouldn't get any sleep with these—" Blackwall kicks one of the cut-down corpses "—clanking around."

"You mean you don't want to stay in a haunted house overnight?" Cullen asks, with enough innocence in his tone that Rowan double takes.

Then the doors on both sides of the courtyard burst open and corpse snarls mangle the evening air.

"Form up! Backs together!" Blackwall bellows.

Rowan falls back until Cullen is at one shoulder and Cole at her elbow. She adjusts her grip on her staff, as if holding a pole arm instead of a mage's tool, and coats the ground in ice. It grants her enough time to summon a barrier that ripples over her skin, and then stretches outward to the others. They're bunched all up, so she can cover them all. With effort.

The first corpses that charge slip and slide over the ice. Rowan pushes shouts and clash of steel out of her mind until there is only her staff, silent as the grave and just as deadly, and her willpower beckoning to the Fade. Thanks to various demonic energies, the Veil is weak and her spells come easily, lashing out with all the raw fury of a swift summer storm—ice and lightning and fire. With every fallen corpse, two more take its place, until a pile of broken bones and severed skin ring around them.

A fresh wave of corpses charges towards her, frenetic and tireless under the driving fury of the parasitic demons possessing them. One goes down in a ball of fire; the second Rowan skewers on the bladed end of her staff. The third she must dodge. Rowan glances to her right and realises Cole is no longer there. And then the corpses fall on her again; there is no time to think. The corpses' dead compatriot weighs down the end of her staff, throwing her off balance, and she barely manages to lever it off the blade and into one of her remaining foes.

Rowan angles her staff to catch a blade mid-swing. Is rather surprised at the strength of dead, desiccated arms. _Of course_ , she thinks harshly, swiping a hand to send a burst of razored icicles at the corpse's chest, _demons. It's the driving force_ behind _the bony arms you should be worried about._  
The corpse swings again, driving Rowan back a step. Lightning arches from her staff to the rust-flecked sword, and the corpse stiffens and shakes. Alas, it recovers from the attack far faster than any natural creature has a right to, and that old blade is again relentless in its pursuit of flesh.

Rowan overbalances on the pool steps and one foot lands in the water. It is a shock of slimy cold seeping into her boot.

The water is cold and slithering and seething with otherworldly power.

She cannot move.

The paralysis sinks through her skin, locking all her joints, stiffening tendons. Rowan's eyes bulge but her hands are caught in the water and utterly useless. When the cold seeps into her chest, grasping at her mana, her jaw locks so tightly she cannot even gasp. Her magic drains like water through fissured clay.

A sickly Fade-bright green glows beneath the surface. A swirling current sweeps her into the water, away from the steps, away from her staff, deep into the pool. Ripples shudder away from the green in choppy rings. The Veil twists and writhes as the water does, gauzy thin. Even with her mana stolen she can feel it shiver over her skin. Too close, too close, and closing in fast—

The green light ruptures the surface. A slight body rises out of the foaming waves. It hovers above the water, its feet elongated into talons that drag across the surface. Water streams from its elongated limbs, from the braids of lily stems knotted in its hair. Its flesh has long since wasted away, and what little remains stretches over its small bones. Floating between its claws is a gleaming box encrusted in dark silt. Rowan must tilt her head back to take in the creature fully; she could stretch out an arm and touch its knee, if she could just _move—_

Another burst and the creature is flanked by two water-swollen corpses draped in rotting velvet. They are better preserved than the poor staff. One still has hair; it is long enough to cling to its back while weed-tangled jewels wrap around its neck in a chokehold. The other is broad-shouldered under its splitting tunic. Both of the corpses turn in unison, tongueless mouths gaping. Their milky eyes land on Rowan. Somewhere in the chaos, Cullen is shouting.

Behind the lank hair draping over its face, the creature's eyes _burn_.

An icy tendril snakes up the back of her neck. _We will play, little mage. Will her magic die before her?_

Cold, swollen fingers close around her biceps and drag her under.

She struggles, thrashes, nails tearing on festered flesh. Whispers rasp behind her eyes, echoing in the water like so many ripples, colliding and consuming.

 _I can lend the strength to free you, if you'll permit me to help..._

Something is tearing under her skin, bleeding into the churning water that _burns_ and she must break free—

 _Let me carry you, mage-child..._

A white glare of pain pounds in her head. She cannot— she cannot _breathe_ —

She has to— has to—

 _Oh, brave Inquisitor, call for me and I will give you breath! Quickly!_

A white-hot glass shard slices through her palm, singing a pure harp-note that echoes in the green behind the straining Veil. It burns hotter than the fire in her chest, writhing, straining against her flesh as the Fade warps and swirls in the emerald current, begging for release—and of its own accord her hand stretches, claws—

She tears through the Veil with broken-glass fingertips, freeing the pressure in her hand, but not in her _chest_ —

The water boils and rolls around her. The creature is caught in the roaring current, seared and shredded by the storm. She is buffeted until she can't tell up from down. She gasps, chokes, trails bubbles that burst in the burning waters. Gasps again.

The churning water slows to something calmer, as do Rowan's struggles. She drifts wherever the green currents choose to take her. Isn't there something in the Chant about emerald waters and Andraste? She won't mind meeting Andraste at last.

She almost doesn't realise there are hands under her arm pits and the water is gone and the Fade is safely on the other side of the Veil until something hits her back. She gasps, coughs, splutters, and this time there is _air_. She doubles over and retches. Those hands ground her while the world spins. When her stomach has finished crawling up her throat, the world resolves itself.

The Anchor burns around the edges, flickering, flaring, fighting. Her one constant. She lifts her hand to her chest, feeling the green-white distortion writhing around her hand, and curls her fingers inward. It is Cole's hands holding her, Cole's hands that rescued her—the only one unintimidated by the Fade.

"Rowan!" Cullen fills the space in front of her, breastplate gleaming silver under grime and gristle, the fur mantle limp around his shoulders. For one absurd moment, all Rowan can think of is an armoured bear. When his hands cup her face, they are clammy and gloveless, hot on her cold cheeks. Sweat mingles with the water running down her temples. He touches her face, her neck, her shoulders. "Are you alright?"

"What happened?" She half-attempts to search for the undead creatures. _Where did they go?_

Cole doesn't let her go. "You choked, but they could not drown you."

Cullen's mouth is set in a grim line at odds with his frantic eyes. He is still probing for injury, palms skimming down her arms. "That thing pulled you underwater, but you somehow used the Anchor to destroy it. I've never seen anything like it." To the spirit-boy, he says, "I'll take her, Cole."

Weedy arms are replaced with equally strong arms encased in Templar steel. Cullen says something about good targets and defence, but words have stopped making sense. He says something else, gentler, and Rowan thinks she hears something that could have been her name. Then Cullen firms his grip on her and leads her away.

It is some time before Rowan stops throwing up water. Cullen is patient with each episode, stroking her wet hair out of her face, holding her so she cannot fall into the mess. Indeed, he quickly learns to recognise her little lurch that precedes each attack. Rowan does her best not to vomit on his boots. When it is over she feels as if every drop of water and acid has been wrung out of her stomach, which is now knotted like cousin Claudia's embroidery.

Rowan doesn't remember how they return to Direstone Camp.

The Anchor won't stop flickering, straining, sending needle-thin bites of pain through the tendons of her hand. Her hand clenches into a fist and stays like that, but nothing can alleviate that feeling that there is a yawning _gap_ in her hand. Rowan almost doesn't notice how some of the soldiers and scouts make themselves scarce until Silah smacks a recruit with her spoon for cringing away from a flare.

Cullen is drawn away, reluctantly, barking orders throughout the camp. Before he must leave, he strokes her cheek in plain view of the soldiers. "I'm sorry. Hold on as best you can."

Entrusted into Cassandra's care, Rowan can follow simple directions. Cassandra leads her somewhere, carrying a bundle, and other people drift past like pale reflections, faceless imitations that fade in and out of perception. Something is babbling, too high pitched for words, growing louder with every step. Rowan blinks and Cassandra is undressing her, and then herself, and a breeze scrapes goosebumps over both their hides.

"This way, Rowan. That's it."

Cold seeps into her ankles and she flails. "No! Nonono!"

Cassandra's leading hand becomes a vice around Rowan's wrist. "I'm sorry, my friend, we must get you clean. It is only the creek. See? No harm will come to you, I promise."

No matter Cassandra's coaxing, Rowan cannot be lead into the creek. Bone-deep tremors start in her chest and ripple outward, tearing through her shoulders, ending in her trembling hands.

The creek is a shallow, placid thing that prefers to stretch as wide as it can across a gravel bed, but it is black and cold and sucking at the shoreline for its newest victim. White pebbles glimmering under the surface are skulls picked over; a tangle of sticks jutting out of the water are jagged femurs, the marrow licked clean.

Rowan whimpers.

Cassandra sits her down at the edge of the creek and washes muck and ichor off them both with a scratchy cloth. Rowan clutches Cassandra like a rock, an anchor that is not green, gripping shoulders so strong and steady and _alive_. Cassandra doesn't seem to mind that there will be bruises. She is uncharacteristically talkative as she works, quietly recounting training mishaps and childhood misadventures with her brother Antony. The words wash over Rowan, like fresh sheets of silk smoothing over her skin, and while she cannot quite make sense of the words any more than she can discern meaning from the creek's babbling, the rhythm soothes her.

"There." Cassandra helps Rowan dry and dress before changing herself. Rowan escapes up the creek bed as quickly as she can manage, feeling dead hands snatch at her shoulders.

"Voices taunting like water, dark, despairing, dead. They can't hurt you anymore. They're quieter now. Here." Cole takes her hand, his fingers short and rough and cool against her own, but she can feel some kind of pulse and that's enough.

They sit together in the embrace of a tree's ancient roots, woman and boy, mage and spirit. Cole holds her hand the entire time. While he may not be warm, he is soft and gentle, as moonlight would caress marble, borrowing light from the sun to give it to those who need it most in the darkest night. Slowly, slowly, her fear-shakes subside and delicate chill-trembles of a more natural variety take their place.

"Hands that catch, hands that comfort. I don't understand."

Rowan's hand closes gently over his own. Cole allows it, if not for sentiment then because he can sense she needs it. "Sometimes just being here is enough. Knowing that someone cares enough to sit with you."

Cole still doesn't understand. "But I'm not doing anything."

"You are." She squeezes his fingers. "You're helping."

He says nothing more and neither does she, surrendering to a silence anchored by a small, cool hand and a shoulder she eventually finds herself leaning against.

"Here you are." Cullen peers around the tree trunk, divested of his armour, his confidence propelling him only a few steps closer.

Rowan attempts a smile, but from the look on Cullen's face it is not as reassuring as she hopes. He lowers himself to the ground beside her.

Cole looks between them, then he stands with an eerie grace and leaves without a word. Rowan is content to trade Cole's shoulder for Cullen's.

"I hope Cole wasn't disturbing you."

Of all the things to be concerned about. "He was keeping me company."

Cullen huffs a little at her warning tone and runs a hand through his hair. "Are you alright, Rowan?"

"No," she says, and hates the waver in her voice.

Cullen pulls her flush against his side, taking care not to strain his injured shoulder, the heat of his body blooming through his tunic. Being Fereldan, he is undisturbed by the evening temperature tipping from cool to cold. Despite living in a castle in the mountains _she_ is used to warmer climes and welcomes his heat.

"That thing—it was an arcane horror," she begins. Cullen agrees with a nod, eyes dark. She opens her mouth, but the words are stuck.

"A pride demon that has possessed a mage's dead body," he finishes quietly.

"They drowned her, Cullen. Their own daughter, and they—they were so ashamed, they locked her away and _they killed her_."  
"The Circles are hardly ideal, I see that now, but untrained magic is far worse. None of that had to happen—an entire household destroyed for nothing. She should have been given to the Circle for training."

So many should haves. Could haves. If Rowan's parents could have found a mundane explanation to make their daughter disappear. If they could have turned back time to prevent her birth. Could have, should have.

"How can someone be filled with so much shame that it's considered better for a child to die than to admit they have magic?"

Cullen doesn't answer, this line of questioning jutting against his past like pressure on a broken bone. He shifts his weight, one hand creeping to his forehead.

"The demon came to her because she was imprisoned," Rowan continues. "If her parents hadn't..."

He shakes his head. "Demons always find a reason to tempt mages."

"She was miserable. And it used that against her. Some reasons are easier to use than others."

Cullen's gaze grows distant, then he returns to himself with a shake of his head, sharper this time. He looks at her, _really_ looks at her, and his brow puckers. "You should get some rest—" But she is shaking her head back and forth. "Rowan?"

Rowan swallows, convulsive. "I don't want to see it again in my sleep."

Cullen's expression changes. He cradles her cheek in one hand, his callouses coarse and warm against her skin, and presses his forehead against her own. "I can't stop the dreams," he admits, low and rough. "But I will be with you the whole night. This I swear."

She closes her eyes and her soft exhale fans over his lips. "I'd like that."

They settle in her tent, Cullen following her inside in front of the entire camp. There's no time for embarrassment. They strip off outer layers, weapons laid on the ground in easy reach. Here the Inquisitor's tent is no larger than any other, and Rowan is just able to stretch comfortably. With Cullen inside too, any free space has vanished.

The lie down and tangle together until they are both comfortable. She kisses him, quietly, entertaining no thought beyond relief. Cullen responds in kind, his fingers stroking her hair, memorising the curve of her cheek. Rowan listens to his breathing even out and deepen and wills the shaking in her chest to subside. She times her breathing to his and it helps, somewhat.

Rowan drifts through the camp, over grass and moss and stone, until the air is dank and stale despite beams of golden light filtering through the forest. She ghosts around the massive girths of the ancient trees, keeping one eye out for any giants or bears that may care to ruin her walk. And then the light fades, a rapid death that leaves the understory gloomy and bereft without even moonlight to freckle the ground in silver. Water gurgles somewhere unseen like a man breathing through mouthfuls of blood.

When Rowan steps into a clearing, the first thing she sees is the gates. They hang ajar on their rusted hinges, like outstretched hands—like a challenge. And then she notices the slick green light that pervades the clearing, stemming from nowhere and everywhere at once. The empty air resonates with a slithering hum, sickly at first but gaining strength.

Rowan pivots on a heel and steps into the great hall of the Trevelyan estate. The marble stallion rears on its hind legs, fierce, the lines of its mane flowing, its silky black coat marbled with thin lines of white. The first thing to greet any visitors to the Ostwick family home, invoking prestige and pride in equal measure. The furnishings are all mahogany polished to a fine finish. Aunt Livia's favourite chair, perched near the window to catch sunbeams like an indolent cat. The hall is empty, gaping, twin staircases spiralling upwards around the steed like the horns of a demon. A floor of smooth polished black stretches beneath Rowan's feet, reflecting that eerie emerald tone, and she wonders what happened to the gold-trim carpets.

Rowan halts, uncertain. What was a buzz in her ears is now a thrum in her veins, drowning out her heartbeat.

 _You don't want to speak to them, trust me._

Something slinks out of sight, flitting behind the drapes, its form warping for the briefest moment.

Two figures stand at the railing on the second floor, even more motionless than the statue beneath them, for at least its contours suggest movement. Clad in moulding finery, bedecked with gold and jewels, She recognises the soft brown of one's hair, the shape of the other's nose; familiar to her courtesy of a mirror.

Both and neither of them speak. The voice comes from all sides. "You don't belong here, _mage_."

The floor vanishes.

She plummets into ice water, black as sin and twice as thick. It sucks her down, down, covering her head. Mud in her throat, silver-green bubbles trailing through the black, she can't breathe, can't _breathe_ —

 _Rowan._

A laugh ripples through the water. _I_ told _you, silly child. But I can help you..._

 _No. No no_ no _._ She thinks it over and over, as to entertain anything less is an opening for one of them to wedge themselves in, smothering her under the cold leeching tendrils until she can't even scream—

 _Rowan!_

She can only sob, throat closed, flexing her fingers, mouthing _no_. Something brushes her back, her hair, and she shrinks away from the demon's touch—

"You're awake, Rowan! I am no demon." The touch again, tracing circles over her neck. "You're safe. You're awake. They can't touch you here." The voice keeps crooning, coaxing, until her breathing slows if not her heart and she can make sense of her surroundings.

"Cullen?" She leans towards him as he pulls her closer, secures her in his arms now that she is no longer thrashing.

His fingers card through her short hair. "I'm here."

Cullen knows as well as she that there is a good chance it had not been a mere collage of memory and fear, but real Fade-spawn probing and plying her disturbed dreams for weakness. So he does the only thing a mundane man can: he holds her tight, her shoulders curving inward to his chest.

Ultimately, it is just another failed possession attempt. She's experienced enough of those over the years, and this one was neither the most tempting nor the most terrifying. Her heart slows and her breathing steadies and she settles in Cullen's arms.

She is alive, bruised in tender places but still whole and wholly herself, and Cullen is with her. No matter the magic that flows in her noble blood.

It is enough.


End file.
